


But The Face Will Still Pursue You

by Smaragdina



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-22 04:49:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/605992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smaragdina/pseuds/Smaragdina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is always the danger of a masquerade: the masks are more true than the men they represent, and she should have been tipped off by the fact that he wore a skull." The three Ladies Boyle plead for their lives in three different ways.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Black: Logic

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a line from "Masquerade" from "The Phantom of the Opera"

It’s sometime after midnight and Brisby’s got her cornered in the music room, pinned back against the stone side of the fireplace that’s _biting_ cold even through her clothes. His empty-eye mask is looming over her black blank one. He’s hissing endearments, promises, threats. Waverly does not know what they are, anymore; all she knows is that his twisted face is too close to her own and she has a knife in her pocket (and there’s the state of her reputation and the state of the carpets to consider, blood is such a _bitch_ to get out) and -

And it is suddenly a moot point. There is no small amount of shouting as Brisby is yanked away by the neck and shoved back, hits a globe, sends it toppling and crashing into flower arrangement. It’s all very quick. Very efficient. Very _welcome_. Waverly takes a great breath and uses it to snap at the guards that come rushing into the room. She directs their anger towards Brisby and his spluttered excuses, and away from the guest who’d yanked him off her.

The man is wearing a costume that looks very grim in contrast to the gaiety of Dunwall’s nobility; and his mask is in such _exceptionally_ bad taste.

Waverly gathers herself, straightens, adjusts her tilted hat and puts on a smile. It’s a brittle smile, false, but he won’t be able to see that behind her own mask. All that matters is that he hears it in her voice. “Ah, well, that’s over with.” It comes out far more flippant than she actually feels. “So. How can I thank my daring rescuer?”

The use of the word _rescuer_ , and the amount of honey she layers over it, makes her want to stab herself in the _eye_.

The man twitches, slightly. Stiff. “Can we talk?”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?”

“Privately.”

The man’s mask is a _skull_. She makes herself smile just the same. “Of course.”

Waverly is a practical young woman. If she is given a choice between a man in a mask of empty skin and a man in a mask that spits in the face of wanted posters all over the city, she will chose the exciting one a hundred times over. She is not naïve enough to request a third option.

“Might I have a name?” she asks, as she leads him up the stairs.

And there it is, again: that _twitch_. “I thought the whole point of this party was guessing.”

What he really says is _no_. Waverly frowns. This is not a game to him. He is no young unspoilt Brimbsley relation or hanger-on to Ramsay or any of the other nameless guests she doesn’t know but _knows_. She has _no idea_ who this man is, and that unsettles her nearly as much as Brisby’s mask.

It is very quiet upstairs.

This unsettles her too.

Hiram’s paranoia is rubbing off on her. Truly.

“Guess, then,” she replies. “You’ll know soon enough. My sister’s the one whose tastes runs strange enough that she’d let you leave the mask on.”

“You’re Waverly.”

She glances back as she pushes open the door to her room. “What gave it away?”

There is no answer.

Whoever this man is, he is impossible. Waverly _likes_ impossible. She sweeps off her black hat and her mask and tosses them both on the bed. Behind her, the man shuts the door and locks it with a _click_. “We can talk,” she says, going to the sidebar to pour them both drinks, “or we can ‘ _talk_ ,’ but either way, take that dreadful mask off. I’m quite curious as to –”

She turns.

And Waverly goes very quiet, and very still.

Corvo Attano is quite still, as well, though it’s a different and watchful sort of stillness. His hand is only resting lightly on the hilt of his sword, but this means nothing. He looks very tired. The wanted posters have been generous: they’ve left out some of the gauntness of his face, the scar under his right eye, the flat sort of resignation in his gaze.

Waverly swallows hard. “I suppose,” she murmurs, “that there’s no point in screaming.”

“No.” He hesitates. “Not for you, anyway.”

She nods once, slow. Her veins seemed to have filled with ice – it’s a very _solid_ sort of feeling. She raises the glass of whiskey in her hand in a small toast and downs it, wincing, in one long swallow.

He still hasn’t moved.

“I won’t insult the both of us by asking _why,_ ” she says. Outsider, the whiskey _burns_ in her throat. It tastes almost like the hysteria she cannot allow herself to feel. “You’re after Hiram. You’re _not_ after me.”

Corvo sighs. “Don’t bother trying to plead –”

“I _will_ try.” The glass _clangs_ as she sets it down and goes to fill it again. Her back is toward him, but she doubts it makes much difference. He’ll run her through whether she’s watching or not. “I might as well. You’re lucky. If I thought it would work I’d start taking off my clothes, but you’re rather famous for not falling for that.”

Corvo makes a small half-amused sound. “What else am I famous for?”

Waverly braces both hands on the sidebar and briefly closes her eyes. Her sisters, she thinks. Her sisters need her. They cannot last a week without her. And she’s not dead yet. The fact that there’s no sword blossoming silver through her chest means that he _wants_ to hear what she has to say. She racks her brain for every rumor she’s heard of the former Lord Protector, before his disgrace; comes up short and racks her brain for every conclusion she can draw about after. Combines them both. “I know,” she begins, “what it’s like, to live in someone’s shadow, to be taken for granted –”

Corvo says nothing. But it’s clear she’s made a mistake. The sword is very sudden and very _cold_ on the side of her neck.

Waverly grits her teeth. “Go on, then.”

“My life wasn’t like that,” Corvo murmurs fiercely. “It wasn’t. It –” He stops. “Just – keep talking.”

His voice is flat. His voice is _finished_. She draws inspiration from that. “You don’t need to kill me,” she presses. “Take the key to Dunwall Tower or whatever else you want. I don’t care. Hiram’s not worth my skin.” Her lips twitch despite herself. “My skin’s worth very little, honestly.”

She tries to turn, but he won’t quite let her. This makes sense. She supposes that he doesn’t want to look at her face.

“If I let you live you’ll go running to the guards,” he says.

“No.”

“You’ll go running to your sisters.”

“Not until Hiram is dead. Never, if you want. I swear. You _don’t need_ to kill me. I can help you if you let me live.” That’s the real point, honestly. _Mercy_ is a very pretty idea, but it’s better if she can press an _advantage_. She flinches as the edge of the blade kisses her neck. “I-If you cut me I’m going to have to come up with a way to explain it, though. May I turn?”

He allows her to.

Waverly braces herself with both hands on the countertop behind her, because if she doesn’t she will _fall._ The sense of panic is all very abstract. She’s not shaking. She’s just cold. What she’s said to him is all perfectly true: her own life is worth very little to anyone but herself, but her sisters _need_ her, and they’re worth all the world.

Slowly, she reaches into her pocket and draws out the key to the Tower. She holds it out to him as if he’s a hound that might bite. “Take it,” she manages. “ _Go_. I swear I won’t breathe a word you were here. I’ll try to get Hiram to loosen security if you like. Whenever you’re done I’ll make sure my family supports Emily. Or whatever you want.”

Corvo gives her what might be a fraction of a smile. “I can’t trust you.”

 _Of course not,_ Waverly wants to yell. _Obviously._ She can see it in his face. His face is somehow even more terrifying than his mask (this is always the danger of a masquerade: the masks are more true than the men they represent, and she should have been _tipped off_ by the fact that he wore a skull). She can see in his eyes that this is not a man who can trust _anyone_ , ever again.

She makes herself nod.

“Just do what makes sense. I’m not _stupid._ I-I’m more helpful to you alive.” Her words, she hopes, are cool and rational. Waverly draws a thin breath, and thinks of her sisters, and prays that this man has _reason_ left if not _mercy_. She has, after all, never been deserving of mercy. “ _Please_.”


	2. Red: Survival

“It’s a pity you weren’t here earlier,” Lydia chatters, as she closes the door behind them both. “Brisby tried to corner me by the banquet table in full view of everyone. Imagine if you’d come by then. If you’d thrown him into the dessert instead of into the harpsichord, it’s all anyone would be talking about for _weeks_.” She winces behind her blood-red mask. “Plus you wouldn’t have broken the harpsichord.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s fine.” It’s _not_ , but this is the most she’s heard the skull-masked man speak. For someone who wishes to _come upstairs and ‘talk,’_ he’s distressingly short on the talking.

Normally, Lydia wouldn’t mind. The men of Dunwall rarely have anything remotely interesting to talk about. But this one…

He’s gallant, or noble, or _something_ , judging by the way he’d yanked Brisby away from her. But this is nothing remarkable in and of itself. She’s met _plenty_ of men who wear a thin veneer of gallantry over a perfectly rotten core. And going by the mask, he’s got either horrible taste or a good sense of humor.

Neither of these is why Lydia’s brought him up and locked the bedroom door behind them.

She’s locked the bedroom door behind them because of the mark on his hand. Of course she recognizes it. It’s a wonder that the Overseers haven’t killed him yet. Lydia would very much like to talk to him about it, and she hopes that he’s at least half as interesting as the mark implies, because it’s been so long since talking to a man led to anything but shed clothes and disappointment.

 Well.

They’ve got to shed a bare minimum of clothes, at least.

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I spoil the game,” she sighs, as she pries off her mask and tosses it aside. “It’s Lydia. Pretending to be a copy of my sisters was getting _incredibly_ boring.” She nods to him. “Might as well take off your own and let me know who  you –”

He does.

“…Are.” Lydia stares at him.  “I-I’m dead, then” she says faintly. The laugh that comes bubbling up is half-hysterical. “I _knew_ this was going to be an interesting night.”

Weary annoyance flickers across Corvo’s face. “You didn’t,” he corrects. “You wrote in your diary that you were afraid things would be boring. Don’t bother lying.”

Lydia can only nod.

No wonder it’s so quiet upstairs. It’s likely all the guards are dead. She’d hired them at Hiram’s fretting insistence: they were supposed to be the absolute best at their jobs. So much for that. If they’re dead, Lydia knows she shouldn’t even bother to try to run.

Come to think of it, she should have noticed the blood on his coat.

Corvo Attano looks like a _wreck_. It’s not just the blood. She understands why he wears a  mask: she’d wear one too, if she looked that drawn and desperate underneath. He’s pale. There are bags under his eyes. It’s clear that he does not sleep well. He looks _haunted_ , and Lydia latches onto that faint hope as her eyes flick down to the mark on his left hand.

(He’s also an _idiot_ , leaving the mark uncovered like that. Or maybe he just lacks self-preservation. Neither one bodes well).

Lydia draws a shaky breath. She could plead, very prettily, but a good performance needs an intro and the only one she can dream up past the panic buzzing in her brain is _stupid_. She launches into it anyway. “ _Please_ ,” she begins hating the way it makes her sound like an innocent fool, “you don’t need to –”

“Don’t bother,” says Corvo. It’s utterly flat. “Burrows did a lot of things he _didn’t need to_ , too.”

“You didn’t need to take off the mask.”

A shrug. A glance away. His marked hand tightens in a fist. “I was hoping you’d give me a better reason to spare you.”

Lydia nods, again. Corvo Attano doesn’t look very murderous. Nor merciful. He doesn’t look like he cares. He looks –

_Used._

It’s a look that’s familiar.

“Why are you doing this?” Lydia asks. Corvo all but _rolls his eyes_ but she talks over him, narrows her eyes, points at the mark. “ _Why?_ Is it because of _him?_ Are you putting on a show?”

Corvo flinches back as if he’s been burned.

_Fascinating._

She will not bother seriously pleading for her life, or the life of Hiram Burrows (the former matters very much to her and the latter matters not at all). She does not think Corvo will respond to either. But clearly _this_ is something that has touched a nerve.

“Look, I don’t know how much you know about him or why he came to you,” Lydia goes on. “But you want to stay on his good side, right? Keep him interested? Are you killing half the guards in the city because he _asks you to?”_

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

Corvo’s lips press together in a thin and bloodless line. And his sword is suddenly in his hand. It’s such a casual motion that Lydia doesn’t notice for an instant – she jumps back when she does, winces when she hits the rear of the bed with an incredibly obvious _thunk_. She has to spend a moment biting down on the _awful_ urge to scream for help.

She’s got nowhere to go when the point of that sword hovers not a _hairsbreadth_ away from the hollow of her collarbone. The music downstairs plays on. Sound of laughter. Uncaring. Lydia whimpers. She’s gone cold as frost all over. Her clothes are the color of passion red, and she does _not_ want to see them further reddened with her blood. She does not want to die alone up here, there is so much she wishes to do, she wants to go back downstairs into the color and light, she wants it _very much –_

“You don’t,” she manages, “you don’t want to be doing this –”

“You don’t know that.”

He’s right. She doesn’t. What this man _wants_ and what he _needs_ are irrelevant, because he’s not so much a _man_ anymore as a puppet or an empty shell. She knows that the Lord Protector of old was not a violent man. She also knows what men look like when they are _broken_. Hiram has told her, at sickening length, how Jessamine and Coldridge did not _break_ Corvo so much as shatter him into tiny pieces.

How unfortunate for him, then, that the Outsider was the one to put him back together.

“I-I know what he is,” Lydia gasps, and is rewarded when Corvo goes still and listens. Of course he’s listening. If he didn’t want to _listen_ she’d already be dead. “I’ve studied him,” she goes on (thinking of the rites she’d performed in the closets and attics of this house to cleanse it of the old High Overseer owner’s influence, the blood on the basement stairs, the bones she’d hidden under carpets and within books and in the cracks of the very walls). “I don’t have his favor, I’m not like you, I’m not marked, but I know what he is. And I know what he likes. You can ask anyone at the Academy to verify this. He doesn’t want you to be boring.”

“…Go on.”

Corvo’s eyes are so very empty. She’s not sure if it’s exhaustion that’s making them look so perfectly _black_ , or her imagination, or something darker.

It’s a look she recognizes in herself. She _knows_ what it is like to be swept up in a storm of something terrible. There are many books, some half-heretical, about the way that the Outsider lives in music, and Lydia knows them all to be true. She knows this because at times it feels like _she_ is at the mercy of her music and not the other way around.

She knows that the only choice is to do what the storm desires, or drown.

When she steps away from the bed so that she can stand without its support, he lets her. When she draws a shallow breath to calm the knocking of her heart between her ribs, he waits for her to speak.

“I’m not going to insult either of us by truly pleading for my life,” she says. “Think about yours. Think about what he wants to see. Think about what he’ll find more _interesting_. If you let me go, I’ll go downstairs and say nothing, and he’ll be so _enthralled_.” She does not need to tell him that the Outsider appreciates blood sacrifice now and again. This is not important. What is important is recognizes that they are both so much smaller than the forces for which they play.

Lydia swallows hard. She reaches into her breast pocket and draws forth the key to Dunwall Tower. She holds it out to him like an offering at a shrine. _“Please.”_


	3. White: Guilt

“Oh,” says Esma, very quietly.

And that is all she can say for a long time.

Corvo’s just standing there. The mask has fallen limp from his fingers. He’s not looking at her as if she’s the woman he wants to sleep with; he’s looking at her as if she’s a practice dummy in the yard, all anatomical diagrams and red target points on the heart and throat, and he’s also looking at her as if she’s something scraped from the bottom of a Distillery District gutter. There is not a shred of compassion in his face. It’s not an emotion that could ever appear, comfortably, on his face again.

Esma finds that she is suddenly not drunk at _all_. She is perfectly, _terrifyingly_ sober.

She paces, around and around like a caged animal, because she _is_ a caged animal, and Corvo _doesn’t move_. This means nothing, of course. She has no doubt that if she were to scream or bolt for the door she’d find herself with a blade in her throat quick as blinking. The loop she paces gets smaller and smaller, and she doesn’t speak, and her arms are wrapped tight around herself as her thoughts tumble over one another like rocks in a landslide.

If she dies –

(There is no _if_ , now. There isn’t even a _when_ ).

She is the head of the family. In name, at least. Publicly, they’ll be lost without her. Privately, they’ll survive. Waverly has always scorned Esma for her frivolity and Waverly is _right_. Lydia will have to marry, quickly, which won’t be a problem at all. Her prospects are good. Her sisters are bright and clever; her sisters are the ones who dream and scheme, respectively, while Esma smiles and fritters it all away. They’ll probably be _better_ off without her, which isn’t a good sort of thought at all.

“If I were stupid,” she begins with a deep breath, “I’d tell you to spare me for the sake of my sisters –” Corvo makes a small annoyed sound and Esma hurries on. “I-It’s not my sisters I need to worry about. They’ll be fine. It’s not them.”

“I thought you’d be asking me to have mercy on _Burrows_ ,” he notes. There is the faintest thread of amusement in his voice.

Esma hears herself laugh.

“I don’t care a fig for Burrows. He’s nothing special. Trust me, I’ve had enough men to know.” She glances at him, wondering if she should go for _that_ particular route of persuasion – no, no. Despite what Waverly says about her, she’s neither quite that shallow or stupid. The former Lord Protector has duty wrapped around him like a suit of armor. If Esma were to try and peel said armor or clothing away, she’d find herself short a head. She’s pulled off risker seductions, true, but now is _not_ the time.

 “Why bother?” she asks. “Why did you even take off the mask? Why are we having this conversation?”

Corvo shrugs. It’s a tired gesture. “I’ve been killing a lot of people lately. I thought –” He looks down. His jaw works. “This isn’t personal.”

“Oh. Well. That makes all the difference.” She gives a faintly frantic laugh. “That makes me feel so much better. It’s never anything _personal_ , is it?”

“Would you prefer I knock you out and give you to Lord Brisby like he asked?”

He says it like it’s nothing.

“He - _fuck_.” Esma presses a hand to her mouth and turns, sharply, goes to the window. Rest her forehead against the glass and breathes. In and out. She is so utterly sober, now, and the glass is freezing. It’s quite bracing. “ _No._ Outsider’s eyes. _Nothing personal_ , you say, and then you ask _that_ –”

“It was only a question.”

“Fuck you.” Her hands are tight on the sill. Any minute, she expects to look down and see a sword sprouting from under her breastbone. That was absolutely not the kind of penetration she had in mind when she brought him upstairs. It’s a horrible thought.

There’s no sound, though, and when it becomes clear that Corvo’s waiting on her to make the next move she swallows hard. There’s not a hint of compassion on Corvo’s face, so that’s _not_ the emotion she’ll have to play on if she wants out of this alive. “I have a _daughter_ , you bastard.”

The former Lord Protector makes a small noise. “And?”

“So you shouldn’t – ”

“Lots of people have daughters,” Corvo snaps. The point of his sword is suddenly very immediate and cold against the nape of her neck. “Just because you’re one of them doesn’t mean you’re a good mother. You _knew_ what Burrows was planning.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t personal,” Esma manages. She watches the words condense on the glass. Obscure it. “I bet it wasn’t personal for the man who killed Jessamine, eith-”

She gives a loud and completely undignified _squeak_.

All Corvo says is “don’t.”

Esma nods. Later, there will be time for her to roll her eyes and despair over how _touchy_ the man is. Now, there’s only the sharp sting of a cut on her nape, the blossoming heat of blood running down the back of her neck. She touches a hand to her throat and draws a thin breath. “I-I have a daughter. She’s eight.” He’ll kill her for this. “Emily’s age.”

She doesn’t even think she can hear Corvo breathing. The room is silent. She swears that that she can _hear_ the blood soaking into the snow-white collar of her suit. That color is so ironic for the both of them. She’s heard it’s the only color the little almost-Empress deigns to wear.

Death does not come, though, and the sword doesn’t move from its careful position against the knob of her spine. “I’m not much of a mother,” Esma goes on, and the words are clumsy and blunt in her mouth because they’re _true_. “I’m not much of anything. A-and my sisters can raise her. She’ll be…fine…without me. They’ll all be fine without me. But that’s not the point. Because I _swear_ they’ll both make sure she knows how I died.”

“Stop.”

“So kill me.” He doesn’t. “She’s a curious little girl. Rather like the little Empress. When she grows up she’ll come looking for you –”

_“Stop.”_

“- And you’ll have to look at her and tell her it was _nothing personal_ –”

Corvo grabs her by the shoulder and wrenches her around.

He’ll kill her now. He will. Blood all over her innocent-white suit. There was emptiness in his eyes when he’d first took off the mask, dispassionate duty, but now his face is _murderous_ and she’s gone too far, she’s pushed him too hard, she’s gone _too far._

There is no harm, then, in going a little farther. Esma Boyle lifts her chin, and _does not shudder_ as Corvo braces to stab the blade through belly and out between her ribs in one efficient motion. She has never been more sober or more frightened in her life – but she is the _face_ of this family, and there is a _reason_ that this party is a masquerade. Esma is _ever_ so good at masquerades. It is fitting that she should die at one. “You can tell her,” she says, “that you asked her mother if she’d rather you _give her_ to that swine Brisby for him to do with as he wishes. That this was her choice. I bet that’ll make her _feel better_.”

Corvo Attano _hates_ her.

Esma nods, shakily, and reaches into her pocket for the key of Dunwall Tower. It’s very small in her hand when she holds it out to him. “Or,” she says.

This man has no compassion, only rationality and want and guilt, and so she does not bother with _please_. She closes her eyes. When she opens them, there are three possibilities.

The first is that she will awake in a cell in Brisby’s manor far away, but this is not a real possibility at all.

The second is that she will be dead, and will open her eyes upon the swirling madness of the Void.

And the third –

(But was there _ever_ any other option?)

When Esma opens her eyes, the key is gone. And Corvo Attano is gone. The room is empty. He had not even had the courage or the patience or the strength to look her in the eye as he left. It is almost as if he had never been, and when she goes downstairs no one will be the wiser; and her daughter is alive, and Esma is alive, and her sisters are alive. They are, all of them, alive.


End file.
